operational?

If not, they soon will be. The main airport in San Juan, however, is open. Military teams could be dispatched to get others opened up on the island, as well.

Even if an airport doesn't have the infrastructure available to make it fully operational, as long as the runway is intact, planes can land and take off. The military has generators, radar, communication, mobile control towers, and everything else needed to establish a forward air base all of which is air transportable. It would take a maximum of two days to make the airport fully operational and in the mean time they could still use it on a less than fully operational basis.

...the airports/airfields are too damaged for the military to launch a massive airlift effort!


And the DHS refuses to waive the Jones Act so that non-US flagged ships can bring in supplies and equipment, because the ports cannot handle the amount of incoming vessels!

get those airports up and running ASAP. Put our military resources on it and get moving. We have those capabilities. We should be using them to maximum effect, I believe.

Puerto Rico is part of the United States of America. Time to get on the stick.

Pilots are essentially flying blind.

Too much air traffic right now is a recipe for disaster.

They really do. I wonder if it's on its way yet.

We have plenty of them, but they don't seem to be in the air yet.

Yesterday I read a long article listing which groups are on the ground in PR with a long list of C-17, C-130, etc. flights with their men and material payloads. Also listed were how much of various types of supplies. Several days back they had delivered over 6 million liters of water. That is a lot, but a mere drop in the bucket when dealing with over 3 million people.

There are roughly four thousand US military now in PR, not counting those aboard ship.

It's like some just don't get the scope of what happened and the logistics involved.

off a navy carrier

know this cause when he landed on the carrier he was given a patch with the carrier insignia on it which he gave to one of my kids.

think that place was an island too

Per Coast Guard Admiral...

Federal officials say the reopening of ports is key to disaster recovery because ships can carry far more cargo than aircraft. Brown said air relief often has a more dramatic appearance, but ships are necessary for a humanitarian crisis of this scale.

“An island like Puerto Rico or St. Thomas is fed and supplied by the sea. Ultimately the mass of response is going to come by sea, and getting the ports open is the single best thing the Coast Guard can do to get Puerto Rico back on its feet,” said Brown, who as 7th District commander oversees operations in the islands.